User:Masao battousai: Difference between revisions

* Instruct squad commanders to create squad channels that specify the Wing and Squad number (W#S#)

During times of peace, the most important task of any military is to prepare for war.Force planning is planning that is associated with the creation and maintenance of military capabilities. all force planning derives from a common set of concepts which describe how we will operate and perform certain key functions. Based on this common set of concepts, force planning integrates all the efforts of peacetime, including training, education, doctrine, organization, personnel management, and equipment acquisition. The operating forces must be organized to provide forward deployed or rapidly deployable forces capable of conducting expeditionary operations in any environment. The active operating forces must be capable of responding immediately to most types of crisis and conflict. For operations and training, Marine forces will  

be formed into Marine air-ground task forces (MAGTFs). Operating forces should be organized for warfighting and then adapted for peacetime rather than vice versa. Commanders should establish habitual relationships between supported and supporting units to develop operational familiarity among those units. Doctrine is a teaching of the fundamental beliefs of the Marine Corps on the subject of war, from its nature and theory to its preparation and conduct. doctrine does not consist of procedures to be applied in specific situations so much as it sets forth general guidance that requires judgment in application. Doctrine demands professional competence among its leaders. The military profession is a thinking profession. Leaders must have a strong sense of the great responsibility of their office; the resources they will expend in war are human lives. Warfare requires intelligent leaders with a penchant for boldness and initiative down to the lowest levels. Not only must we not stifle boldness or initiative, but we must continue to encourage both traits in spite of mistakes. Consequently, trust is an essential trait among leaders— trust by seniors in the abilities of their subordinates and by juniors in the competence and support of their seniors. Relations among all leaders—from corporal to general— should be based on honesty and frankness regardless of disparity between grades. The purpose of all training is to develop forces that can win in combat. entry-level training provides a common experience, a proud heritage, a set of values, and a common bond of comradeship. Basic individual skills are an essential foundation for combat effectiveness and must receive heavy emphasis. Commanders at each echelon must allot subordinates sufficient time and freedom to conduct the training necessary to achieve proficiency at their levels. In order to develop initiative among junior leaders, the conduct of training—like combat—should be decentralized. Training programs should reflect practical, challenging, and progressive goals beginning with individual and small-unit skills and culminating in a fully combined arms. Collective training consists of drills and  

exercises. Critiques are an important part of training because critical self-analysis, even after success, is essential to improvement. Professional military education is designed to develop creative, thinking leaders. The early stages of a leader’s career are, in effect, an apprenticeship. As an officer continues to develop, mastery should encompass a broader range of subjects and should extend to the operational level of war. The responsibility for implementing professional military education iis three-tiered: It resides not only with the education establishment, but also with the commander and the individual. The education establishment consists of those schools, subordinate commands, or outside agencies—established to provide formal education in the art and science of war. All commanders should consider the professional development of their subordinates a principal responsibility of command. Self-directed study in the art and science of war is at least equal in importance to maintain. Since war is at base a human enterprise, effective personnel management is important to success. The personnel management system should seek to achieve personnel stability within units and staffs as a means of fostering cohesion, teamwork, and implicit understanding. Finally, promotion and advancement policy should reward the willingness to accept responsibility and exercise initiative. Equipment should be easy to operate and maintain, reliable, and interoperable with other equipment. In order to minimize research and development costs and fielding time, exploit existing capabilities—“ off-the-shelf” technology—to the greatest extent possible. Acquisition should be a  

complementary, two-way process based on established operating and functional concepts. Equipment is useful only if it increases combat effectiveness. The acquisition effort should balance the need for specialization with the need for utility in a broad range of environments. As much as possible, employment techniques and procedures should be developed concurrently with equipment to minimize delays between the fielding of the equipment and its usefulness to the operating forces. There are two dangers with respect to equipment: the overreliance on technology and the failure to make the most of technological capabilities. There are two basic military functions: waging war and preparing for war. Any military activities that do not contribute to the conduct of a present war are justifiable only if they contribute to preparedness for a possible future one. Clearly, we cannot afford to separate conduct and preparation. They must be inti-mately related because failure in preparation leads to disaster on  

How we propose to accomplish a mission is the product of our understanding of the nature and the theory of war and must be the guiding force behind our preparation for war. The challenge is to develop a concept of warfighting consistent with our understanding of the nature and theory of war and the realities of the modern battlefield. Our concept for winning under these conditions is a warfighting doctrine based on rapid, flexible, and opportunistic maneuver. Maneuver warfare is a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope. Rather than wearing down an enemy’s defenses, maneuver warfare attempts to bypass these defenses in order to penetrate the enemy system and  

tear it apart. The greatest effect of firepower is gen- erally not physical destruction— the cumulative effects of which are felt only slowly— but the disruption it causes. If the aim of maneuver warfare is to shatter the cohesion of the enemy system, the immediate object toward that end is to create a situation in which the enemy cannot function. Inherent in maneuver warfare is the need for speed to seize the initiative, dictate the terms of action, and keep the enemy off balance, thereby increasing his friction. Also inherent is the need to focus our efforts in order to maximize effect. An important weapon in our arsenal is surprise. Besides traits such as  

endurance and courage that all warfare demands, maneuver warfare puts a premium on certain particular human skills and traits. Orienting on the enemy is fundamental to maneuver warfare. We should try to understand the unique characteristics that make the enemy system function so that we can penetrate the system, tear it apart, and, if necessary, destroy the isolated components. If the enemy system, for example, is a fortified defensive works, penetrating the system may mean an infiltration or a violent attack on a narrow frontage at a weak spot to physically rupture the defense, after which we can envelop the enemy positions or roll them up laterally from within. We  

should try to “get inside” the enemy’s thought processes and see the enemy as he sees himself so that we can set him up for defeat. First and foremost, in order to generate the tempo of operations we desire and to best cope with the uncertainty, disorder, and fluidity of combat, command and control must be decentralized. Second, since we have concluded that war is a human enterprise and no amount of technology can reduce the human dimension, our philosophy of command must be based on human characteristics rather than on equipment or procedures. Our philosophy of command must also exploit the human ability to communicate implicitly. This concept has several

practical implications. First, we should establish long-term working relationships to develop the necessary familiarity and trust. Second, key people—“actuals”— should talk directly to one another when possible, rather than through communicators or messengers. Third, we should communicate orally when possible, because we communicate also in how we talk—our inflections and tone of voice. Fourth, we should communicate in person when possible because we communicate also through our gestures and bearing. Commanders should command from where they can best influence the action, normally well forward. As part of our philosophy of command, we must recognize that war is inherently disorderly, uncertain, dynamic, and dominated by friction. In practical terms, this means that we must not strive for certainty before we act, for in so doing we will surrender the initiative and pass up opportunities. There are several points worth remembering about our command philosophy. our philosophy requires competent leadership at all levels. Our philosophy also requires familiarity among comrades because only through a shared understanding can we develop the implicit communication necessary for unity of effort. Since our goal is not merely the cumulative attrition of enemy strength, we must have some larger scheme for how we expect to achieve victory. The first requirement is to establish what we want to accomplish, why, and how. To influence the action to our advantage, we must project our thoughts forward in time and space. Through shaping, commanders gain the initiative, preserve momentum, and control the tempo of operations. The further ahead we think, the less our actual influence can be. The higher our echelon of command, the greater is our sphere of influence and the further ahead in time and space we must seek to shape the action. Decisionmaking is essential to the conduct of war since all actions are the result of decisions or of nondecisions.Since war is a conflict between opposing wills, we cannot make decisions in a vacuum. Time is a critical factor in effective decisionmaking—often the most important factor. Decisionmaking requires both the situational  

awareness to recognize the essence of a given problem and the creative ability to devise a practical solution. Decisionmaking may be an intuitive process based on experience. Alternatively, decisionmaking may be a more analytical process based on comparing several options. We should base our decisions on awareness rather than on mechanical habit. Finally, since all decisions must be made in the face of uncertainty and since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any battlefield problem. Mission tactics is just as the name implies: the tactics of assigning a subordinate mission without specifying how the mission must be accom- plished. Mission tactics benefits the senior commander by freeing time to focus on higher-level concerns rather than the details of subordinate execution. Mission tactics serves as  

a contract between senior and subordinate. It is obvious that we cannot allow decentralized initiative without some means of providing unity, or focus, to the various efforts. We achieve this harmonious initiative in large part through the use of the commander’s intent, a device designed to help subordinates understand the larger context of their actions. There are two parts to any mission: the task to be accomplished and the reason or intent behind it. The intent for a unit is established by the commander assigning that unit’s mission—usually the next higher commander, although not always. It is often possible to capture intent in a simple “. . . in order to . . .” phrase following the assigned task. A clear expression and understanding of intent is essential to unity of effort. Another important tool for providing unity is the main ef- fort. We cannot take lightly the decision of which unit we designate as the main effort. Each commander should establish a main effort for each operation. Put simply, surfaces are hard spots—enemy strengths—and gaps are soft spots—enemy weaknesses. Gaps may in fact be physical gaps in the enemy’s dispositions, but they may also be any weakness in time, space, or capability. Similarly, a surface may be an actual strongpoint, or it may be any enemy strength. An appreciation for surfaces and gaps requires a certain amount of judgment. Due to the fluid nature of war, gaps will rarely be permanent and will usually be fleeting. In order to maximize combat power, we must use all the available resources to best advantage. We accomplish combined arms through the tactics and techniques we use at the lower levels and through task organization at higher levels. In so doing, we take advantage of the complementary characteristics of different types of units and enhance our mobility and firepower.

We have discussed the aim and characteristics of maneuver warfare. We have discussed the philosophy of command necessary to support this style of warfare. We have discussed some of the tactics of maneuver warfare. By this time, it should be clear that maneuver warfare exists not so much in the specific methods used—we do not believe in a formularistic approach to war—but in the mind of the Marine. In this regard, maneuver warfare, like combined arms, applies equally to the Marine expeditionary force commander and the fire team leader. It applies regardless of the nature of the con- flict, whether amphibious operations or sustained operations ashore, of low or high intensity, against guerrilla or mechanized foe, in desert or jungle. Maneuver warfare is a way of thinking in and about war that should shape our every action. It is a state of mind born of a bold will, intellect, initiative, and ruthless opportunism. It is a state of mind bent on shattering the enemy morally and physically by paralyzing and confounding him, by avoiding his strength, by quickly and aggressively exploiting his vulnerabilities, and by striking him in the way that will hurt him most. In short, maneuver warfare is a philosophy for generating the greatest decisive effect against the enemy at the least possible cost to ourselves—a philosophy for “fighting smart.”